I set my pack down on a rock and gaze across eons of time. Brandon, my volunteer guide in the Grand Canyon, towers above me.
“This is one of my favorite places in the world,” he says, looking like a warrior with a reddish bandana wrapped around his forehead. The rest of his long brown hair tucks behind his ears.
“It looks like cotton candy,” I say, looking at the chimney-top cliffs in the distance. Horizontal sedimentary rock layers of brown, pink, purple and blue rise above the Inner Gorge.
Suddenly, a drop of rain. Another. Now three. My arm is quickly drenched. Sunscreen runs off like spilled milk. I’m perplexed by the sudden thunderstorm. It’s early July. We don’t get summer rain in Southern California, where I grew up.
Brandon’s head is craned up, awestruck by an angry-looking cloud to the east. “We’ll have to find some kind of overhang so we don’t get struck by lightning,” he says nonchalantly.
“Are you serious?” People don’t really get struck by lightning, do they?
“I was hiking with an ex-girlfriend in weather like this once. We got to the summit, and her hair was standing straight up, like porcupine needles. I pointed at her and said, ‘Oh, My God, your hair!’ She looked at me and said, ‘Your hair!’ And we double-timed it down the mountain before the lightning storm hit.”
A drawn-out boom of thunder echoes throughout the canyon. The rain, like a swarm of angry bees, stings my face. Now I know why the park rangers were giving us such strange looks on our way down the Bright Angel Trail.
But Brandon remains as calm as ever. “Hey, you still got those honey-roasted peanuts?” But he’s also scouring the trail for a safety zone.
“Uh, yeah.” I hand over the crinkly bag.
“You’ll get hyponatremia if you’re not careful out here.” I picture Brandon at his real job, in baby blue scrubs, explaining the symptoms to a patient at Flagstaff Medical Center.
He continues, “You drink too much water and you dilute your sodium levels. My ex- girlfriend had an eating disorder, but I didn’t want to bring attention to it. So I decided I wasn’t going to eat, last time we hiked this trail. Problem was, I drank too much water. Got to the rim and was a little loopy.”
He crunches away on the salty snack. “Here, eat some.”
“What would I do without you?” I take a handful, feeling less manly by the minute.
“Eh, you'd do fine,” he says modestly. “You’re a tough kid.”
Compared to Brandon, I look like a Care Bear. I met him on couchsurfing.com and he’s fulfilling his promise to take me hiking. While I’m crashing at his house, it’s like living in an REI catalogue: surf boards, kayaks, canoes, snow shoes, skis, ice picks, climbing ropes, backpacks, daypacks. Helmets, mountain bikes, fishing poles, life vests. Tents, carabiners, canteens, kerosene. He’s like Bear Grylls, but with a Minnesota accent.
Another crack of thunder. Brandon picks up his pack. “Yeah, the problem with Coconino Limestone is the lightning will bounce and scatter out over the surface. It’ll get ya even if you’re far away from the strike.” I follow his lead and we head back up the winding trail.
“Hey, have you seen 127 Hours?” Maybe he’ll appreciate my knowledge of amputee mountaineer Aron Ralston.
“Nah,” he replies. “I met the guy on his tour and he was all full of himself, more in it for the book deal than anything. It seemed like he unnecessarily put himself in dangerous situations just to prove he was a macho man.”
This Brandon dude is the real deal.
“I think the monsoon is passing,” he observes. “We probably should just head to the top.”
The downpour turns into a dripping faucet. I’m not going to be electrocuted after all. The black clouds pass lazily to the west. We work our way up the trail. My shoes churn red mud with each step.
By the time we get back to the top, the sun has returned. I take a seat with my back to the cliff and soak in the view. A toad-like tourist with cactus stubble waddles down the path and stops right in front of us. With his back to the canyon, he looks thoughtfully at the cliff above our heads.
I feel irritable in the heat. “Hey, buddy, the Grand Canyon’s that way.” I point straight in front of me.
“Oh, I know,” he grumbles. “But have you looked at what’s above you?”
About ten feet above me, the cliff face juts out. Below, in a sheltered hollow, there are rust-colored images on the wall.
“No way,” I mutter. I see the fading impressions of five elk in queue. To their right, on some darker stone, a cow-like figure. Further right, a couple of tally marks hang above what looks like a DNA diagram. Three more deer figures surround it.
A park ranger approaches us. She says, “Yup, you’re in Native American territory, boys. People have been living in this region for over 12,000 years.”
She points to a cluster of trees at the bottom of the canyon. “The Bright Angel Trail was once used by the Havasupai Indians to reach their gardens way down there.”
Discovery Channel should be taping this.
“But these pictographs,” she says, moving towards the wall, “are from the ancient Anasazi. They’re about 800 years old. The Mallery Grotto is what we call this little panel here. These are painted on, but check out some petroglyphs if you can. They’re carved into the rock.” She continues down the trail.
I glare at the fat tourist, who has managed to smear his mug with chocolate. How did he spot these artifacts when I missed them? A Hershey’s wrapper takes his place as he rolls off.
I pick up his trash. Is this what we will be remembered for, 800 years from now? I stuff the discards in my pocket and look back at the cave art.
I turn to Brandon, who looks unimpressed. “What do you think, man?”
He smiles and slowly nods his head. “You want to see some petroglyphs? I’ll take you to some petroglyphs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment